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Show ITALIANS CHECK AUSTRIAN DRIVE Count Cadorna's Victory Is Being Be-ing Compared to Battle of Marne. FOUGHT FOR FORTY DAYS Italians Fight With Backs to Long Line of Precipices Over Which Onslaughts On-slaughts of Enemy Threatened Threat-ened to Hurl Them. By A. BEAUMONT. Milan. Italians are comparing Count Cadorna's great victory, when he checked the Austrian drive from the Trentino and threw the foe back headlong, to the Battle of the Marne. I have just learned new details of this action. The defending army at the moment the drive began, I am assured, amounted amount-ed hardly to two divisions (40,000 to 60,000 men). They had to hold the enemy In check until a powerful army of offense could be concentrated at their back. Ihe ground thus heroically contested contest-ed was a tortuous line of Alpine peaks. 'Me chief of which, after the famous ,lonte Pasubio. were the summits of ?ornl, Alti. '..ntu Alba, Monte Nov-?gna, Nov-?gna, Monte "an, Monte Magnaboschl, Cima Echar and Monte Lisser. Fojght Furiously. A young ollicer, who was at Monte Lisser only a few days ago, gave fie a graphic account of these positions. The retreating buttle had been fought furiously, almost night and day. for 40 days. The enemy was already gaining alimpses over the mountain passes of the smiling plains of Viceuzn below. The Italian soldiers were fighting with their backs to a long line of precipices, prec-ipices, over which the furious and incessant in-cessant onslaught of the desperate enemy, en-emy, whose numbers seemed lnex-hiustible, lnex-hiustible, threatened to hurl them. Suddenly there came n feeling of relief. re-lief. Sledge-hammer blows were being dealt to the Austrlans on the extreme right and left wings. The enemy's attack in the center instantly became , less resoluto, and the Italian troops, who had hitherto been retreating, found to their joy that they were backed by huge lines of Impregnable defenses, prepared during those 40 days, and masses of troops and artillery artil-lery were eager to come forward and take the places of the brave men who had no long defended the danger-line. Hours passed in eager expectation. The last scene In the preparation was the arrival of the guns. They were towed up the mule paths ; dragged up by sheer work of hand to seemingly Inaccessible summits. Ammunition trains stood thickly behind, waiting to unload, " "Swawi Up Mountain. Thousands upon thousands of troop? were swarming up the mountain slopes. New roads sprang into existence exist-ence where none had been before. Dutterles made their nppenranc where only eagles had built their n-sfcts, and the last desperate skirmish on Monte Lemerle and MagnoboschI had scarcely subsided when hundreds of Italian guns opened fire with an Infernal chorus. Shells new thick and heavy from the lines between Monte Pau and Monte Stremel, across the valley of Aslago, and word came that the Austrlans were yielding and falling back. The Italian tnfuntry Immediately took up the pursuit. They rushed down the mountain slopes, raising their war cry of "Savoy," and occupied Cesuma and Galllo. Thence they spread along the roads of the entire valley, re-entered Asiago, and continued contin-ued the pursuit of the enemy on Monte Longara, to the north, and Monte Cenglo, to the south. And everywhere the Austrlans were found in full retreat, or offering only a weak resistance. The enemy has set fire to the little mmintain villages and hamlets, and is falling back upon the immediate defenses de-fenses of Rovereto. Thus the first fugitives fu-gitives of the defeated army are returning re-turning to this town, whence they had set out 40 days ago on their "punitive "puni-tive expedition," with the punishment turning against themselves. |